0000000000384433

AUTHOR

Andreas Burg

An Energy-Autonomous Wireless Sensor with Simultaneous Energy Harvesting and Ambient Light Sensing

Wireless sensor nodes (WSNs) are generally powered by batteries, which results in a substantial limitation to the places where the nodes can be installed, to the maximum number of deployable devices, and to the node lifetime. To meet the demand for Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications that require a large number of maintenance-free, low cost, wireless sensor nodes, this paper proposes a wireless sensor platform with a single photovoltaic transducer that performs the dual role of harvesting energy and sensing ambient light. This dual use allows even smaller and cheaper nodes that do not require any form of supporting external power, with a reduced component count. The device implements off-…

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Intrinsically Self-powered, Battery-free, and Sensor-free Ambient Light Control System

This paper deals with an energy-autonomous wireless sensing system with an indirect measurement of the light energy for ambient lighting sensing. The system can perform power measurements without battery or external power sources and generates time-domain data. The advantage of the proposed solution consists of greater energy efficiency, a reduced number of components, higher miniaturization, and a reduction in implementation costs. The device is implemented using off-the-shelf components on a printed circuit board (PCB) with the size of 2 x 2 cm(2) and the thickness of 0.45 cm, it can harvest and detect sunlight ambient light as low as 200 lux.

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